Museum of the Republic, Sacred Art Musuem

Rio de Janeiro Travel Blog

Woke up to an overcast, rainy morning, but not cold so wasn´t too bad. Caught the metro back over to Cinelandia to visit the Cathedral again, and go down into the Sacred Art Museum housed in the basement. It has some very interesting pieces, including lots of items that belonged to the royal family - baptismal fonts used for the princes, and a golden rose sculpture given to Princess Isabella when she signed the abolition of slavery bill. Has quite a few oratories made in the Minas Gerais region, interesting to see these after we visited the museum in Ouro Preto. AFter a quick coffee, we took the metro back to Catete for lunch and a visit to the Museum of the Republic. This museum is housed in a beautiful coffee baron´s house, which later became a presidential palace.

The pyjamas, gun and bullet involved in President Vargas´death.

It is here that President Vargas committed suicide in the 1950s, and there is an exhibition upstairs about his life. The bedroom in which he killed himself still has the original furniture, down to exhibiting the pyjamas he was wearing (complete with blood-stained bullet hole) and the gun and bullet that killed him. We´ve noticed quite an obsession with the gory details over here! The house itself is very ornate, but lovely, and much of the furniture and decoration is original. Has little plates in each room explaining what the room was used for and some of the things that happened in there.

We then caught the metro back to our stop, and the metro-bus over to Ipanema. We walked back from here along the beach-front, right back along Copacabana. Bought some wine and chips for dinner, and ate them in our room with HJ, watching TV!